Jan 16, 2008
Homeaway.com has emerged as a leading source of inexpensive vacation homes and apartments
So many large new companies are beginning to offer the rental of vacation homes or vacation apartments on a worldwide basis that it's hard to keep up. Starting some 12 years ago, you had Vacation Rental by Owner (www.vrbo.com), followed soon by several similar but smaller firms, than followed last year by the big Endless Vacation Rentals (www.evrentals.com) (owned by the immense Wyndham Hotels corporation) and even more recently by Zonder.com (www.zonder.com). And, of course, Rentalo.com (www.rentalo.com) is also active.
But the mightiest of them all turns out be a firm of which you may not have heard: Homeaway (www.homeaway.com), of Austin, Texas. Formed in 2005, but not really operating until late 2006, it has recently scooped up the big VRBO.com, merged with it, and today offers far more than 100,000 vacation rentals in the U.S. and abroad. Part of its appeal is an unusually attractive website that's one of the most logical and informative of any in the field. (Take a look even if you're not presently in the market for such a rental).
Since Homeaway now owns VRBO, and presumably has added VRBO's properties to its own inventory, is there any reason any longer to use VRBO? Yes, claimed an executive of Homeaway with whom I spoke yesterday afternoon. Though a large percentage of their respective inventories are the same, the two collections of homes and apartments aren't totally similar, and you can occasionally find a bargain on one site that doesn't appear on the other.
Renting vacation homes or apartments in place of hotels has become standard operating procedure among some of the smartest cost-conscious travelers. Such properties offer advantages of both cost and convenience, in areas ranging from Orlando and other sunbelt locations to Paris and London (where apartment rentals have become almost necessary for groups of four and more persons traveling together). As a test, go to Homeaway's website, click on the state of Florida, then click on several of the locations in the Orlando area, and after accessing several offers, go deeper into the site for the many photographs that are included of each property. Who wouldn't prefer a multi-room home-with-swimming pool to a hotel charging exactly the same?
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But the mightiest of them all turns out be a firm of which you may not have heard: Homeaway (www.homeaway.com), of Austin, Texas. Formed in 2005, but not really operating until late 2006, it has recently scooped up the big VRBO.com, merged with it, and today offers far more than 100,000 vacation rentals in the U.S. and abroad. Part of its appeal is an unusually attractive website that's one of the most logical and informative of any in the field. (Take a look even if you're not presently in the market for such a rental).
Since Homeaway now owns VRBO, and presumably has added VRBO's properties to its own inventory, is there any reason any longer to use VRBO? Yes, claimed an executive of Homeaway with whom I spoke yesterday afternoon. Though a large percentage of their respective inventories are the same, the two collections of homes and apartments aren't totally similar, and you can occasionally find a bargain on one site that doesn't appear on the other.
Renting vacation homes or apartments in place of hotels has become standard operating procedure among some of the smartest cost-conscious travelers. Such properties offer advantages of both cost and convenience, in areas ranging from Orlando and other sunbelt locations to Paris and London (where apartment rentals have become almost necessary for groups of four and more persons traveling together). As a test, go to Homeaway's website, click on the state of Florida, then click on several of the locations in the Orlando area, and after accessing several offers, go deeper into the site for the many photographs that are included of each property. Who wouldn't prefer a multi-room home-with-swimming pool to a hotel charging exactly the same?
Write and read comments about this post.
Labels: accommodations, websites
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